Hi, I'm new to cheesemaking and to this forum. I have goats and have just started using their milk for cheese.

I was making a soft cheese with 3 litres raw milk, 5ml starter and 3 drops vegetarian rennet. The milk failed for form a curd after 3 hours so I just added more rennet until a curd formed.

I strained it in cheesecloth and made my soft cheese with cracked black pepper and it tasted good, although it wasn't spreadable.

My intention was to use the whey to make Ricotta so after leaving it at room temperature for 2 days I added 1 1/2 litres whole raw milk and about a teaspoon of white wine venigar.

Instead of the light fluffy curds floating to the surface which is what I was expecting, it formed a heavy curd that clumped together and sank to the bottom of the pan. It reminded me of chewing gum so I quickly followed instructions for making mozzarella, I dunked it in boiling water then took it out and formed a ball and dropped it in cold water to harden.

I left it in brine overnight and today decided to use it on top of a pizza. When I took it out of the brine it was quite hard and I had to slice it rather than pull it apart. It reminded me of haloumi. I didn't expect it to melt on top of the pizza but it did and tasted delicious.

I wasn't intending to make mozzarella just yet as it seemed too complicated for me and I'm not sure what I did wrong or right to get it accidentally.

I'm new to cheese making myself, so I'll be interested to read the information from more experienced members. However, my understanding right now is that to make riccota from whey, the whey is supposed to be very fresh (as in within a couple hours of making your other cheese; perhaps the proteins and sugars change due to the acid levels). Anyway, I had assumed that meant you wouldn't get anything once it got too old, so either your lump of curd was just from the added milk, or this is why you can't use older whey for riccota. Nice save, though!

- Jeff

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I am also new to cheese making but I agree that everything that I have read says that they whey has to be fresh, 2 to 3 hours old, to make ricotta. I tried it twice but both times I failed to get ricotta, or what I thought ricotta would look like. I have made mozzarella a few times. I made my first hard cheese this weekend, a farm house cheddar. I am excited.

I thought I had read somewhere that you had to let the whey stand for 24 hours for ricotta which was my intention. We were in the process of having a woodburning stove fitted so our old solid fuel cooking stove had to be put out and the whey got to stand for 48 hours instead.

Well done on your first cheddar, I made one a couple of weeks ago but I'm just not sure where to store it for the best results whilst it's ripening.

I've had a poke around the forum, and have found some discussions where people recommend leaving the whey for 24 or 48 hours, so the idea that it must be fresh seems like it might be a bit of a myth.

As for where to age your cheese, here's what I'm doing for a "cave". I use a chilly bin. I put a cutting board on the floor that leaves space at one end of the chilly bin. The space is large enough to stand two 2 litre milk jugs. These are filled with water and then frozen, so it's 2 litres of ice (leave room at the top for expansion or it will spit when you freeze them). The space is so that any condensation on the milk jugs ends up on the floor of the bin, and the cheese is up on the cutting board where it's dry. Actually, I sit the cheese on a layer of chop sticks, spaced out a bit, on top of the cutting board, which allows air to reach both top and bottom.

I keep a thermometer in the chilly bin to check the temperature morning and evening. It stays in teh 10-12 deg C range. Also, I wipea up any water that is under the milk jugs when I change them. They get changed every morning and eveneing. So far, seems to work ok. Not sure of the humidity, but so far none of my cheese have cracked.

- Jeff

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The wise do not always start out on the right path, but they do know when to change course.